i've played enough games in my life that something that's merely there to pass the time doesn't really interest me anymore, when i play a game i want it to really grab me with something, be it unique and engaging mechanics or interesting storytelling, just something that'll stick out my memory and make me go 'yeah!! that thing!!'

another thing i really value in a game is replay value, i generally enjoy diving deep into the games i'm interested in so that of course often leads to me wanted to do multiple full playthroughs, so i appreciate games that create adventures that retain their appeal in some form not just on the first time, but the sixth

so when i play a game like resident evil village where i spend the first ten minutes holding forward to put a baby to sleep, or holding forward to like walk through a load of snow before anything actually happens i'm not just bored, i'm thinking, 'oh, i will have to do this every time' and the game has moments like this so frequently and is so disgustingly average otherwise that i could only stomach the one playthrough, and with that, a large part of its staying power in my memory is eviscerated

the game's structure is similar to 7's, in that you meet a group of koopalings who all go off to their individual castles and you go to each one of them and kill them, this time to collect 1 out of 4 thingies to get you to the endgame, and also similarly to 7 they are by the numbers facsimiles of resident evil levels where you collect items and kind of solve puzzles and piece together the whole map and blah blah blah it's fine, it's serviceable, but not once was there anything that like wowed me or made me feel much or anything really, i'd like to be able to critique them further but i honestly don't remember that much about these areas aside from their general aesthetic, which i suppose is a step up from 7's one-two punch of 'brown house, grey boat'

there's one setpiece in house beneviento (generally my favourite area) that i found actually rather unsettling, but i knew after finishing it that it would never scare me again, there's hardly a gameplay element to it and it would be reduced to a glorified cutscene on a hypothetical second playthrough unfortunately

the dlc campaign, shadows of rose which i also played, has a different setpiece at this point that kind of blew me away honestly, as it wasn't just something creepy and unique within the series (to my knowledge) but also challenging to the point that i actually failed it the first time, and the second time was an incredibly close call, it actually had me panicked because i, the player, had to survive this part, i felt in sync with the character on screen in a way i've rarely felt playing 7 or 8, as i usually feel like an outsider watching the character trying to survive

i don't want to spoil what happens in the segment just in case, but it's something to do with manikins

these games are far too much of a reassuring prescence in what are meant to be horror games, coddling me and making sure i'm impressed and not too uncomfortable, wrestling control away from constantly so something scary can happen to ethan or rose in my stead, someone will jump on me and starting like eating my face or something and it'll be awkward because idk if this is just a cutscene and the game is proceeding as intended, or if i actually fucked up half the time, i'll be mashing one of the face buttons when something like this happens (probably a habit i picked up from resident evil 4) and then the little 'skip cutscene?' thing will appear in the corner and i'm like oh okay i'll just get comfy then

there's also a lot of segments that are railroaded to the point that they may as well be cutscenes, with the fish guy's area being a particularly bad offender, it all just feels so phony, the hand of the designer is so visible at all times i never just get lost in the world i'm meant to be in

i also think that the RE engine's bend towards realism just makes the games look incredibly bland and samey, everything's kinda lit realistically and all the environments are just kinda, normal looking, it feels like there's not really any interesting composition or focal points or any sort of mood to like anything i'm looking at, all this supposedly impressive detail all blurs together and washes over me and i'm really sick of how these games look, especially considering the very first games in the series still impress me with how well they're presented

i'd really like these games as well as devil may cry to move away from this kind of style personally, maybe then we won't have to rely so much on yellow paint to make things you can interact with visible

this review is probably very messy and i apologise if it sounds dismissive, just playing this back to back with 7 was very disappointing as this direction the series is going right now really isn't my cup of tea, it feels like we're resting on the series' laurels a bit, combat that get the job done, exploration that gets the job done, and a lot of showy, flashy setpieces and nods to older games that i like much more

i'm just always left feeling a bit empty after an experience like this, when i think about resident evil village in the future, will any memories of my experience come flooding back? what will get me talking about it and recommending it to my friends? what is so special about it that i'll end up with that itch, that drive to experience it all over again and return to its world for years to come? it's always a bit of a shame when i don't have an answer